Press

“The conversation among politicians has revolved around pollution pricing, but climate change is an existential challenge and requires a solution that matches its scale. Canadians know we need a much broader mobilization against climate change,” North99 co-director Taylor Scollon said in a statement on the poll.

A new poll conducted by Abacus Data on behalf of advocacy group North 99, and provided exclusively to Ricochet Media, shows that the newfound appetite for a wealth tax in the United States has spread north of the border.

What we see here,” explained Taylor Scollon, co-director of North 99, “is that policies that politicians are not necessarily talking about, that we don’t hear a lot about, to address rising inequality and lack of opportunity for workers, for the middle class, are quite popular. But they are just not present in the discourse right now.”

“Now, there is something of an answer in the form of North99, a “progressive media network” helmed by a former provincial Liberal aide. North99 appears less narrowly focused on partisan attacks and more inclined to push Facebook users toward left-of-centre issues-based content, but its advertising so far this election has aimed to raise fears of a Ford government by drawing attention to local PC candidates who might be off-putting to certain voters.”

Similar to PressProgress (also on this list), they publish myriad critical articles about Conservative politicians and other right-wing figures. Some of the subjects they’ve covered have included the connections between the Koch brothers and Canadian Conservative politics, the relationship between the Manning Centre and a company that worked with Germany’s far-right AfD party, and The Rebel’s connections to Quebec City mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette.

They also try to pressure governments to adopt progressive policies, such as creating petitions to shut down offshore tax havens and ban handguns, which also allows them to compile an email list of supporters like Ontario Proud. They’ve run campaigns to get Shopify to ban “hate groups from their platform, including the violent right-wing Proud Boys” and to discourage Rogers from broadcasting Faith Goldy’s ads in Toronto’s mayoral election.